Tuesday March 2nd
Brisk kite surfing conditions in Poole Harbour
The discerning reader may judge that nothing happened
between February 25th and March 2nd. In a sense, that is true, but of course the
reality, even if mundane, is different.
The weather continues dry with a cold easterly wind. Anti-cyclonic conditions. Warm enough at times to sit outside, if out
of the wind. February 2020 was the
wettest on record, I remember. The storm
before the calm – or the doldrums of Covid-19.
On my walk today I heard a woodpecker drumming for the first time this
year, and yesterday I saw a goldcrest flitting around in an adjacent pine
tree. Daffodils are out, and remind me
of my primary school in Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, at the age of 10. Transplanted rudely from Malta, and following
my father’s occupation as an Admiralty Supply Officer, we were sent to the
depths of West Wales, to a remote and forgotten valley where ordnance for the
naval base at Milford Haven was stored.
Lessons and morning service were in Welsh on an alternate daily basis. The discipline was strict and rarely
relaxed. The cane was used from time to
time, though I cannot remember receiving anything other than severe
reprimands. The headmaster, named as so
many children were in the era in which he had been born, for William Ewart
Gladstone (those were his forenames) referred to the canes as ‘medicine’. The severity of his discipline contrasted
with a genuine wish to help his pupils, many of whom were regarded as ‘twp’ (a
Welsh epithet virtually synonymous with mental retardation). When I was unable to learn a poem in Welsh, I
was kept behind in detention. But he
stayed too, helping me word by word to pronounce and learn this poem. All I can remember was that it was about
daffodils and the word ‘felyn’ had to be pronounced correctly. The ‘f’ is soft, as a ‘v’, and the word means
yellow – which I guess is appropriate.
On St David’s Day – 1st March – rules were relaxed to the
extent that every pupil was allowed to wear a leek or a daffodil as a
buttonhole. Most of the girls wore
daffodils, most of the boys wore leeks.
The leeks were gradually nibbled (raw) in class until by lunchtime they
had mostly gone. I don’t think I had
ever seen a leek up to this time, and the thought of eating one raw made me
chicken out and join the girls, proudly (but nervously) wearing my daffodil.
Friday March 12th
The intervals between diary entries get longer. Little to report as regards any changes in
the daily routine. The builders are here
less often, and less gets done in consequence.
Winston Churchill – “Some people’s idea of free speech is
that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back,
that is an outrage”. Thus Piers Morgan
in a Tweet after storming out of the morning TV programme Good Morning Britain,
when attacked by a weather presenter after some robust comments about the
latest in the Duke and Duchess of Sussex saga.
The background to this is that the two of them appeared on the Oprah
Winfrey interview programme in the U.S. and fairly comprehensively dissed the
Royal family. Meghan alleged that
somebody had expressed concerns about the colour of her forthcoming baby, and
also that she had felt depressed and suicidal and been denied help within the
Royal establishment. Piers was
castigated for saying ‘I don’t believe a word of it.’ As many have pointed out, including author
Frederick Forsyth, these were unsubstantiated allegations. One letter said ‘Darling… she’s an
actress!’. Meghan also complained that
son Archie had been denied the title of Prince.
As one columnist said, Oprah, who admits that most of her information
about the Royal family comes from the TV series, ‘The Crown’, could not be
expected to know that only those in direct line to the Crown get this title,
e.g. the children of William and Kate.
Subsequent research suggests that there is a lot of sympathy for the
Sussexes in the USA, and some sympathy in younger people in the UK, but little
if any in older adults. But as someone
also said – to say you want to get away to Canada and then the U.S. for privacy
and then to appear with the two highest profile presenters in the world, namely
James Corden and Oprah Winfrey, is a funny way of going about it. Enough.
It would not surprise me if the Palace saw it fit to withdraw the
honorary Duchy from the couple.
Days are lengthening and the times when the builders arrived
in the dark and then left at four because it was too dark to see are gone.
Easter Monday 5th April
A long hiatus. The
office has been rebuilt and my computer has been parked in a near inaccessible
spot for several weeks. What has
happened? A lot, or not much, depending
on your point of view. Let’s take the
vital topics in order:
The Pandemic. Now
dignified with a capital letter. Due to
the highly successful UK vaccination programme, cases have fallen dramatically,
and hospital admissions and deaths have declined very substantially in
consequence.
Vaccinations. Over 31
million people have had a first vaccination dose. Cases of Covid-19 have dropped dramatically
but have plateaued slightly following reopening of schools. Deaths however have continued to fall
dramatically and are still falling. The
majority of these are now occurring in hospital, and there is a hangover effect
of people who were infected some weeks ago.
Rules and Regulations.
As of Monday March 29th, up to six people have been able to
meet outdoors, and therefore outdoor sports such as tennis and golf have
recommenced. It was good to be on a golf
course again.
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| Parkstone Golf Club |
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| Now legal - drinks and food outside |
Weather. The clocks
have gone forward. A spell of warm
weather has now been replaced by arctic air with strong northerly winds.
Social unrest. The
murder of a young woman who was walking home across Clapham Common sparked huge
demonstrations by women who have finally ‘had enough’. Safety for women out alone at night is
poor. The news that a serving police
officer had been charged in connection with the crime was extraordinarily
dismaying. Subsequent ‘Kill Bill’
copycat demonstrations, particularly focussed on Bristol, have been a disaster
for all of us, not least the police. A
motley crew of anarchists and professional social disorder specialists has
risen from under its usual stone. The
George Floyd trial has commenced in the USA, sparking further unrest and
disorder. Julie Burchill (who else?) had
to laugh at the Bristol riots; ‘the last time I saw their kind was at the
Extinction Rebellion protests, bunking off from skiing trips to prevent the
proles from getting to work.
Middle-class youth rebel into toy-town insurrection – but working class
youth rebel into ambition.’ It’s a point
she makes in an article entitled ‘Lefties who say they hate billionaires are
just jealous’.
Elsewhere in the world, the military coup in Myanmar has led
to protests and deaths among the civilian protesters, from an army who
seemingly do not mind using live ammunition.
And again, concerning riots, I am reminded of a quotation
which is definitely correctly attributed to a certain white South African chief
of police. With regard to the recent
London and Bristol protests, the police have been caught between a ‘rock and a
hard place’. Charged with keeping the
peace, but also with the requirement to maintain social distancing and forbid
close assembly, they have acted with what seems reasonable restraint. For example, we have not seen any water
cannons, and certainly no tear gas nor rubber bullets – they seem to have
really gone out of fashion in British policing.
During some of the riots in pre-democratic South Africa, the police were
remonstrated with by the International Press for using live bullets in mob
control. Naturally, a number of deaths
resulted. Faced with such criticism, the
police officer responsible, interrogated as to why his men were not using
rubber bullets, and stung to a riposte, said: ‘Listen man; when those bl..ks
start throwing rubber rocks, then we’ll start using rubber bullets’.
A very enjoyable virtual alumni session from my Cambridge
college. Abigail Brundin, Professor of Modern
and Medieval languages gave a talk on the impact of printed books on ordinary
people in Renaissance Italy. As she
pointed out, if you were famous or important, the documentary record is good,
but if you were an ordinary person it is hard to divine what the common
experience was. This is the subject that
interests her most. Much of her talk
focussed on the Inquisition trials of ordinary Italians, for which, almost
uniquely there is ample documentary evidence.
In the mid-16th century, there was much paranoia from the
authorities, particularly the church, about the circulation of the printed
word, following the introduction of the printing press. Citizens could be denounced for possessing a
bible, or indeed small pamphlets with protective prayers or ‘charms’. Under torture, virtually everybody the person
knew could be incriminated or accused. A
horrible period of history.
In a milder fashion, I was amused to hear of some
present-day friends being denounced. A
friend of ours recently died in hospital from Covid-19, acquired during
treatment for cellulitis. After his
funeral, another family attending at the crematorium in the slot after our
friend accused them of not observing social distancing and telephoned the
police. The grieving widow was then
approached, in somewhat apologetic fashion, both by the undertaker and by the
police. No action was taken. Wry amusement from friends of the deceased
who observed that he would have been delighted to have caused trouble, even
after his death, in view of a personality which in Yorkshire would have been
described as ‘bluff’, but might be also construed as ‘difficult’ or
‘obstreperous’.
Back to Cambridge.
Another lecture, a succinct summary of current relations between the USA
and China under the heading ‘A New Cold War?’
His conclusion was that there were many differences between the old Cold
War and the stand-off between the USA and China. But it would be hard to predict how the U.S.
will play it. He ended with the
reassuring bon mot which is attributed to Churchill: ‘America – will always do
the right thing - after exhausting all the alternatives’. This is probably not by Churchill; see quoteinvestigator.com.
Green Issues and Rare Metals.
It has long worried me that the so-called ‘Green’ electric
cars, although not burning fossil fuel, contain precious metals and materials
which are mined in anything but ‘green’ way, and are not inexhaustible. A review of a book by Guillaume Pitron, ‘The
Rare Metals War’ confirms my fears. The
reviewer avers that these elements sound like second-rate British Roman towns;
erbium, thulium, lutetium, yttrium. The
toxic waste generated by the mining of these compounds is huge, and is found in
remote parts of Mongolia and China.
Mining conditions for workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are
‘straight out of the Middle Ages’. In
the modern electric car, cerium is used in the windscreen, neodymium in the
headlights, yttrium in the electric sensors, and so on. Lutetium extracted, crushed, and refined from
rock emerges in a ratio of 1.2 million kilograms to 1. No wonder a U.S. study suggests that electric
vehicles are three to four times as energy requiring as conventional
vehicles. Solar power and hydrogen could
be the future, and the smart hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and electric cars that
we are being urged to buy must surely be a temporary measure. 50 years perhaps? A subsequent review points out that both M.
Pitron and the above review should more correctly have described these
compounds as ‘rare earth metals’, or just ‘rare earths’. The Periodic Table classification is as
‘Lanthanides’.
April 12th, Monday
Easter has come and gone.
The weather warmed, and now it is cold again. The home nations rugby tournament has come
and gone, with some high-scoring, free running rugby to the fore. The final event of the season saw Scotland
drag victory against France from the jaw of defeat, in injury time.
A few weeks ago, an enormous load carrier vessel was caught
by a gust of wind in the Suez Canal, and blocked it for a couple of weeks. An ex-tanker captain wrote to lament the lack
of directional control in these large container ships, the emphasis being on
the building of single-screw craft. I
remember, when living in Scotland in the late 1960s, and due to the blockade of
the Suez Canal at that time, tankers from the Gulf became larger in order to
transport vast quantities of oil to Europe, voyaging around Southern
Africa. Their draft was so enormous
that they were forced to dock and unload oil in Finnart on Loch Long, passing
the front of our house on the way. An
unforgettable sight. The vessels were so
long that they had to undertake a three-point turn into Loch Goil. Loch Long was chosen for the oil terminal, as
indeed also for Polaris submarines because just a few metres out from the shore
the depth plunges to 200 feet, due to ice-age glaciation. Fortunately, the Suez vessel was eventually
refloated.
I have enjoyed reading some extracts from the now unredacted
edition of Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon’s diaries.
Simon Heffer, the historian has updated the diaries, published in 1967,
and virtually everything defamatory has now been restored to the new
edition. Channon, hugely wealthy, and
bisexual, was an ardent friend and admirer of the Duke of Windsor, and horrified
by the abdication and subsequent coronation of that ‘well-meaning bore’, George
VI. A Guardian writer states (correctly)
that his chief virtue as a diarist is ‘an abiding awareness that dullness is
the worst sin of all’. Channon’s
admiration and hero worship of Hitler is literally jaw-dropping. Meanwhile, he was the lover (almost
certainly) of Cocteau and Proust, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, and Terence
Rattigan. However, he did not seem to
mind being seduced by Tallulah Bankhead in her dressing room at the
theatre. An awaited edition from WWII
onward has yet more indiscretions.
Nearly a year ago, I wrote of the ‘what if’ scenario about
the possibility of Prince Charles going to Benenden School and Princess Anne
going to Gordonstoun. The memory
returned this week with the announcement of the death of the Duke of Edinburgh,
a little short of his 100th Birthday. The press, who rarely had a good word to say
of him in times gone by have gone overboard in adulation, searching high and
low for virtually anybody who ever met him to have their few minutes of vox pop
fame. I count myself as a vaguely pink
Royalist, and have always admired somebody who says what he thinks. The coverage however has been wall to wall
and suffocating. It seemed extraordinary
that both of the BBC’s two main TV channels were given over to coverage of his
passing. Philip of course, almost went
to school in Germany, but fortunately went to Gordonstoun, to which his
character was obviously suited. Little
has been made of the fact that he set his cap at Princess Elizabeth during a visit
to Dartmouth Naval College when she was only 13, but perhaps we should gloss
over that (and indeed perhaps it was the other way round). There was, of course, no suggestion of
impropriety, and it was a love match, with their first few years spent happily
on service with the Royal Navy, living at Villa Gwardamangia in Malta. The villa has been neglected in recent years,
and belatedly the Maltese government are thinking of restoring it… The relationship of the Duke and Princess
Elizabeth was of course, heavily fostered and encouraged by his uncle Louis
Mountbatten, the snake in the grass. In
parenthesis, the Villa Gwardamangia in Malta was recommended to Philip by
Mountbatten because of its proximity to the Marsa polo club, where I used to
watch the occasional ‘chukka’ as a child, understanding nothing of it.
Sunday April 18th
The funeral of HRH The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, has
come and gone. A very moving ceremony at
Windsor Castle yesterday. The reported
rift between William and Harry was solved by the expedient of placing Peter
Phillips, the other grandson, between them.
Beautiful music sung by a limited choir of only four voices. All of the Royal Family wore masks. A strange and sad occasion.
Life for ordinary mortals goes on.
A week ago, our walking group reconvened at Tarrant Monkton,
Dorset. A popular group, so we were
divided into three groups to avoid breaking the law, which now allows six
people to be together outside. We were
able to keep a reasonable distance from the group in front so as not to lose
the way. The sun shone, the hedgerows
were white with blackthorn blossom. Wood
anemones and lesser celandine carpeted the woods. During a coffee stop I pillaged the woods for
wild garlic leaves and now have to deodorise my rucksack. Much of the woodland we walked through was
managed and planted by Commander Marten, of Long Crichel, and we passed the
spot where his ashes were scattered. The
pub back at the village was not open, but I was able to call in at the farm shop
in Tarrant Rawston, as I drove back with the roof down on the car.
Blackthorn blossom in the Tarrants
Wood anemone - anemone nemorosa
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| Daffodils in a friend's garden |
We seem to be fated to have seeded our putative lawns during
one of the driest Spring periods on record, but with some watering, and
assistance from a bizarre hailstorm the other day, there is some germination.
I do some mock interviewing for a young colleague who is
applying for a consultant anaesthetist’s post and am pleased when I hear she
has got the job. She tells me that the
questions at interview were not as difficult as mine…
My second vaccination causes minor side effects compared to
the first. There is however now some
fair evidence that a very rare side effect is a prothrombotic tendency –
cerebral venous sinus, splanchnic, etc.
This appears to be an immune-mediated consumption coagulopathy. Treatment is apparently by infusion of anti-platelet
factor IV antibodies. It reminds me of a
patient I treated in 1978, whose aortic dissection some weeks before had not
been recognised (despite her telling her doctor about the pain; ‘Doctor, it
felt like something was tearing inside of me’).
This is of course an absolutely textbook description of a tear or
rupture of a major artery. A stoical
elderly lady from Devon, she came to convalesce from her alleged ‘gall stones’
with her sister in Woolwich, and working at the Brook Hospital (late,
lamented), I met her in the emergency ward whence she had come with haematuria
and severe anaemia. A chest X-ray was
diagnostic of giant aortic aneurysm or dissection and she proved to have
disseminated intravascular coagulation because of it. Heparin was started and she improved
dramatically. But later she developed
signs of superficial venous thrombosis due to the heparin. She remains immortalised in the European
Heart Journal, where we published her story.
Strange how after 43 years I remember her so well, and her alliterative
names.
Ironically, I understand that Angela Merkel has now had the
AstraZeneca vaccine without demur or problem.
Our book club reconvened.
We discussed Michel Houellebecq’s ‘Submission’. A book which I rather flippantly
characterised as ‘another dystopian novel, but with French locations, better
sex, better food, and better wines’. The
somewhat insular, misogynistic, and vigorously heterosexual protagonist is a
lecturer at the Sorbonne. Hopefully, not
all Parisian lecturers are similar.
There is an obvious tie to the university lecturer character in
‘Disgrace’. The homophony between
lecturer and lecherer is noted. Our next
book, fortunately, is a little known novel by Nevil Shute. A further meeting with a women’s book club
group is mooted. It would seem wise to
allow them to choose the book.
The production of Travel Sections of weekend newspapers
continues apace, though surely one can have little enthusiasm for foreign
travel when recurrences and increases of Covid are everywhere. This weekend sees a multi-page feature about
the Mediterranean – with promises of less-travelled destinations. Some of these I can understand – see the
coastal resorts of Turkey – but by boat.
Sensible. Others perhaps less
so. Malta for instance. I would strongly recommend Malta, but only if
one has the supernatural capability of time travel. About 1955 would be the best, I think… I enjoy writing about our travels, but a
recent Literary Review author avers that there are two kinds of travel writers,
‘Travellers who write, and writers who travel’.
Discuss…
An Italian friend, who works for Esplora, the company that
gave us such a wonderful trip to the Aeolian Islands, published an Instagram
picture of Lago di Piediluco the other day.
I was astonished. This tiny lake,
in the middle of Italy, was where we camped in 1958, as my parents indulged
their whim of seeing Europe on the way home from Malta. I can still remember the July heat, the
kindly farmer on whose land we camped who let us play around in his little
rowing boat; watching the fireflies in the woods after supper. My friend reports that it is still an
unspoilt place.
Monday April 26th
I should be doing my tax details for my income tax return,
but most things are preferable to this, so I am filling in time on this bright
bitterly cold day by returning to my diary (or blog if you will). A dreadful sense of ennui prevails. Readers might wish it were permanent. The last few weeks have been exactly like
this. Of course, it seems to be just our
luck to have had grass seed put down at the start of the dry spell. Watering freshly laid grass seed has to be
done with a very fine spray, otherwise the seed gets carried in little rivulets
of water and agglomerates. We’ve managed
some germination and the turf company rep appeared again last week and was
upbeat about it, saying it was the best germination he had seen all spring.
Holding off reading the Nevil Shute until shortly before the
next book club date. Senescence means it
very likely that most of us will have forgotten the story before we get to
discuss it. Not all past memories are so
reliable either. My former colleague, a
chest physician of gentle humour, recalls a crowded refreshments room in the
hospital after he had given a lecture.
This was before alcohol was banned in the hospital. A GP who had attended, after several glasses
of wine, sidled up to my colleague, and said, ‘You see that woman over there,
she looks vaguely familiar. Do you know
who she is?’ After a surreptitious
glance my colleague said, ‘Yes, Dr …, I do believe you used to be married to
her.’
In the meantime, a friend has loaned me another book by
Michel Houellebecq, called ‘Whatever’. Described
by the novelist Tibor Fischer as ‘A L’Ėtranger for the info generation,’ it
features yet another alienated Frenchman.
It’s easy to read, and yet also, depressing. Those trivialities of daily life, if viewed
from such a pessimistic point of view, can certainly get one down. As a break from the book, I venture through
to the kitchen, where I decide to clean out my Bialetti (Moka) coffee
maker. After my morning fix, the pot is
too hot to clean immediately, so I plunge the device in cold water and return
to it later. Separating the sections, I
methodically tip the grounds into the waste bin, and then turn on the tap to
rinse out the filter. The tap responds
energetically and coffee grounds splash up onto Lindsay’s recently cleaned work
top and even as far as the window sill.
This results in another five minutes of cleaning and wiping, and I sense
that I am a character in a Michel Houellebecq novel, depressed by the minor and
trivial vicissitudes of daily life. His
characters seem to be about five standard deviations away from the norm, or am
I imagining myself as normal? Perhaps
the neatest description, if you are thinking of reading Houellebecq, is from
The Guardian: ‘The book slips down easily, like a bad oyster’.
The high pressure, brilliant sunshine, and strong easterly
winds have brought some benefits. The
house uses almost no external power, the solar panels being sufficient for
nearly everything. We have been able to
plan walks and bike rides without any fear of rain. Bike rides is an exaggeration. We did one ride. Last Friday.
Over in Purbeck, down trails, sandy paths, and small roads. We met friends for lunch outside at the
Bankes Arms. We drank and we ate. Life seemed normal, almost. We did 25 miles, and basked in a sensation of
achievement. Begone, M. Houellebecq!
Selfie in front of Corfe Castle
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| Awaiting the chain ferry |
But what of the pandemic? The UK is almost free of it. Only 6% of ICU beds are now occupied by Covid patients. But elsewhere, particularly in India, there is disaster. People dying on trolleys outside hospital with no beds and no oxygen. The scenes are distressing. From a selfish point of view, the failure to control Covid elsewhere is highly likely to lead to variants, possibly resistant. It seems strange to watch, every afternoon at 3pm, the IPL (Indian Premier League), cricket, which seems to continue untouched by disaster all around. Once again, the government’s failure to impose draconian restrictions on immigrants from India is worrying. Three full aeroplanes managed to make it through to Heathrow before the deadline for a blockade. The ban should of course have had immediate effect… We have a drink with a GP friend who has been vigorously involved in the national vaccination programme. She is imbued with a feeling of despair and frustration that all of her (and our) efforts may be wasted because of pussyfooting around by the Government.
Madness - swimming in the sea - a challenge from one of those pictured:
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I will close this entry with yet another manifestation of
the wokeness of our current world. Jane
Austen, the early 19th century author of such classic novels as Emma
and Pride and Prejudice is the latest victim of the pillory of political
correctness. She was fond of (and in her
novels regularly described), drinking tea.
Teatime is a frequent ploy for Austen’s characters to talk and to reveal
their own ignorance or misplaced affections.
Tea, and especially the sugar served with it, carries the hallmark of
slavery, and poor Jane is now subject to cancel culture. To victimise a meek spinster who never had
very much money and died nearly 200 years ago is overstepping the woke mark,
but she remains fair game to those who never really bother to engage with their
subject. Austen was liberal and had a
social conscience, especially by the standards of the times, and had contact
with abolitionists… I really should not
waste so much time on the subject were it not for the vehemence which attends
the protests. Even this last weekend,
the landowner (and Tory MP) Richard Drax had his Charborough Park estate
invaded by public access campaigners, including some from Extinction
Rebellion. The protesters stated that
they were celebrating the famous Kinder Scout trespass in 1932 and requiring a
right to roam. Drax was targeted because
he has the largest estate in Dorset. The
politics of envy. An invasion of
Mustique or Necker Island on the same grounds seems unlikely.
Tuesday April 27th, 2021
Another good day for the building trade. I.e. a beautiful, dry, sunny day. The very strong easterly wind which had been
blowing for days seems to have dropped.
The news varies but is always the same.
Accusations of government sleaze: the sacked Dominic Cummings has
alleged that the Prime Minister considered using wealthy Tory donors to do up
his and Carrie’s love nest, and made crass remarks about ‘piling bodies high
but avoiding another lockdown at all costs.’
Labour have jumped on this of course.
As a BBC 4 presenter said to the labour deputy leader – ‘Is this all you
can do? You’re behind in the polls,
Starmer is unpopular, Boris Johnson’s popularity remains high, and the
vaccination programme has been a huge success in virtually eliminating Covid in
the UK, so you have to jump on this, don’t you!’
I really shouldn’t write about politics. It is a huge turn off for most people.
We have been invited for a drink by somebody whose garden is
so beautiful it has been opened in the National Gardens’ Scheme. I told him we have a row of boring griselinia
bushes, and five plants, all of which we have been given. Two camellias, an apple tree, a geranium and a
cineraria. And some barely grown grass
seed.
Some discussion recently about the teaching of English grammar and spelling. A recent diktat from at least one of the examination boards has said that markers should avoid marking down for spelling mistakes. The thin end of the wedge, I’m afraid. Walking with a friend in the New Forest the other day, I sense I am pushing at an open door when we discuss this. He tells me that in his small surveying firm, he and his partner would regularly receive job applications, and their first cull was all that were misspelt or used poor English. ‘Straight in the bin’, he says. Of course, there are people who are dyslexic who do have significant problems in this regard, but their skills probably lie elsewhere. Imprecision is a slow slide on a slippery slope in medicine. When I qualified, two drugs were in common use as anti-cancer treatments – vincristine and vinblastine – rather similar names, I think you may agree. One could be reasonably safely used as intrathecal treatment (into the spinal fluid), the other caused peripheral neuropathy and spinal paralysis if so used. I leave you to judge.
A digression - New Forest Walk, Sunday 30th April
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| Boldre church, engraved window |
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| Boldre church |
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| New Forest deer |
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| Pastoral walk near Boldre |
Some discriminatory practices at interview are perhaps a
little old fashioned. My former chief of
cardiology was on the interview panel for a consultant in Hastings in about
1977. A very old fashioned martinet of a
consultant (known to me) was also on the panel.
Pinstripe or grey suits, and black shoes were the order of the day. The martinet leaned confidentially over to my
chief after all the candidates had been in and observed, ‘You can always tell
if a candidate really wants the job if he has shined the heels of his
shoes.’ Even in the 1970s this seemed a
slightly old-fashioned method of discrimination. Also, note the ‘He’. Even this is not so extreme as what was
described to me by the great neurologist, Gerald Stern, who was a consultant at
UCH where I trained. He was telling us
that we should dress smartly because our patients expected it and appreciated
it. But he admitted that some standards
of the past were too severe. He told us
that he attended the Middlesex Hospital as a medical student in the 1950s. On his first day, his small group of students
awaited the arrival of the consultant for the ward round. The consultant, who had presumably been on
the staff for many years, observed them with distaste. Stern was wearing sober clothes – suit, white
shirt, tie, black shoes. Suddenly,
without warning, the consultant flung himself full length on the floor and grasped
one of Stern’s shoes. Looking up at the
group with venom, he hissed ‘Rubber soled shoes!’ And that was it. Without a further word they followed him into
the ward.
A pedantic final word on precision. A recent Telegraph article by a respected
journalist used the word ‘accreditation’.
Fine. But then went on to say
that people should be ‘accreditated’, which is not a past participle of the
verb. ‘Accredited’ is correct.
Tuesday May 4th
This follows the Bank Holiday weekend. A severe storm yesterday evening, but sunny
and very windy today. The Indian IPL
cricket has been suspended today after several players tested positive for
coronavirus. Although this is disappointing
for daily afternoon viewing, there is a slight sense of relief that the hypocrisy
of professionals enjoying playing cricket for thousands of rupees, while millions
of Indians are suffering Covid-19 is over for the time being.
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| Camellia williamsii 'Debbie' |
So I end with a cartoon, a picture of ‘First professional
footballer gets the vaccine’. Sorry, not sure of copyright or attribution:
